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I’ve been holding onto this site for years hoping I would one day want to start updating again. That day seems to have come. My plans for 2019 include adding some new stuff here and enjoying the chance to talk about some favorites.

First up, I’ll post about my favorite science fiction book series of 2018, the Murderbot Diaries, which led me to what is probably going to be my favorite fantasy series of 2019 (the books are older than that, but I just discovered them so 2019 is it). I’ll also be posting about these on my fan site for science fiction and fantasy TV and books.

Then I’ll spend some time updating some of the lists of my favorites. A lot of that is still relevant but I’ve also spent the last few years reading and adding even more books and stories to my personal list of favorites. :D

Before all that, though, I’m actually planning an overhaul of the back end up this site. Currently, it runs on WordPress, but I don’t like the new direction WordPress is taking so I’m ready to get this thing off that software. Time to go back to basics. That might take a month or two. It all depends on how efficiently I can transfer the content I have here into the new format.

I went on a bit of reading binge recently and caught up with Amanda Quick’s latest books. It was a binge I enjoyed very much, since Amanda Quick remains one of my favorite authors of historical romance and suspense.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much and The Other Lady Vanishes are set in the 1930s which is a nice change. All the usual Amanda Quick touches are there, from the modern, forward-thinking heroine to the enlightened hero and an element of suspense. I know authors can’t stay in a rut forever, but I do miss Quick’s earlier heroes and more quirky heroines (such as Gideon and Harriet from Ravished, still one of my favorite books). These new ones are just a little too similar for me to enjoy to the fullest. On the other hand, having Oliver of The Girl Who Knew Too Much be a magician was different enough to be memorable. Burning Cove is the link between these two books, and it appears there’s another coming in May. Tightrope looks interesting so I’ll be keeping my eye out for it.

I also read ‘Til Death Do Us Part and it was my favorite of the three. Calista and Trent and the people around them felt more familiar to me than some of the Quick’s newer characters, and I liked that quite a lot.

If you’re a fan, and you haven’t read these yet, they’re worth the time. The links above will take you to Amazon if you want to know more.

I have a lot of favorite authors. Then there are all the authors I really like, but I can’t quite call them favorites, because to me, favorites are re-readable.

No, not just re-readable, favorites write books that I actively seek out to reread.

Amanda Quick has many books in this category for me, including Ravished, Deception, and Mistress. Just thinking about those books often tickles my desire to go find them on my shelves and read them again.

The same for David Eddings’ Belgariad series, or L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s Recluce books.

Another favorite that writes books I want to reread is Johanna Lindsey. AngelWarrior’s Woman, Gentle Rogue, and Deny Not the Heart are still books that I go back to as comfort reads to this day, years (+20! years) later. (I happen to have the paperback editions with the original Fabio covers and my children will have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands.)

But there are some authors who write great books that I really love but that I just never seem to want to reread. I don’t know what to call these authors, because they don’t fit my favorites definition, but they by all means write fantastic book.

It’s a quandary. Because for whatever reason, I have no desire to go back and read their books again.

Eloisa James, for instance, is one of these authors. I love her books, and I seek them out, but I never have that desire to reread any of them and I’m not sure why. Her books are usually excellent reads, and I like the characters (most of the time), but there’s not a single one of her books I can point to and say I want to read again.

That’s why you’ll find a limited assortment of favorites here. Because great books do not necessarily make favorite books. Favorites are those I want to reread.

Which reminds me. I’ve had a hankering for that opening in The Martian again, so I think I’ll go dig it out of my Kindle. I do have a paperback edition of The Martian that I really like (trade sized and very flexible) but it’s upstairs in the office I’m trying to convert to a library, a project that’s been in the works for about a year because I haven’t found the particular bookshelves I want and need to finish the project.

Favorites are worth buying in print—you know, in case civilization falls and I have only enough power to keep a flashlight charged for rereading the books I already love. ;)

This book was a good find for me. I happen to love shorter novels and novellas, and Fanning the Flames is a first in series novella. From what I can tell, it’s also part of a bigger series, so really it’s a prequel for a series within a series.

Not the same cover as when I read it, but still nice. ;)

Series: Girls’ Night Out book 0 (0 meaning prequel); Jackson book 4

I’d just finished reading A Little Bit Wild by Victoria Dahl and came across this one in her book list and decided first up I was going to check out all the shorter stuff. (Her book list is not up to date unfortunately! I really wish authors would take more care to keep this stuff current.)

I liked so much about this story, but since it is short, I don’t want to say too much because it might spoil the fun. However, I can say that I really liked Lauren. I’m usually a bigger fan of the men in romance novels than the women, but for once, I really liked the main female character—and liked her more than the guy.

Not that Jake wasn’t a good hero, it’s just that I liked Lauren a lot. Honestly, I think she’s the closest mirror of myself I’ve ever read in a character. It was freakish at times. Which probably explains why I liked her so much.

All that said, this was a fun read, the sexy times were entertaining, and the ending was satisfying. Pick it up and give it a chance if you like contemporary romance stories.

Fanning the Flames by Victoria Dahl

Burning for you

Some men are off-limits. Close friends of your ex-husband, for instance. Or firefighters who work in the same building as you. Yet despite her best judgment, librarian Lauren Foster can’t help noticing fire captain Jake Davis whenever he jogs by…shirtless. They’ve always been friends, but all it takes is one not-so-chance meeting at a local bar and one not-quite-innocent walk home to ignite a fierce, uncontrollable desire between them.

Widower Jake Davis has tried to ignore the spark he feels whenever Lauren’s around, but once he sees her curves in a little black dress, there’s no turning back. No matter how often she says she’s all wrong for him, the sexy, outspoken divorcée is driving him wild in the best possible way. Maybe she’s just blowing off steam. Or maybe he can convince her to fan these flames into something deeper, hotter and truer than they ever expected….

I just finished reading The Croak Series by Gina Damico and it was a fantastic paranormal series with some romance and lots of action. It had great locations, funny dialogue, and was an all around great series!

Here are the books.

Click the images for details at Amazon.

Book #1 : Croak

Sixteen-year-old Lex Bartleby has sucker-punched her last classmate. Fed up with her punkish, wild behavior, her parents ship her off to upstate New York to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer, hoping that a few months of dirty farm work will whip her back into shape. But Uncle Mort’s true occupation is much dirtier than that of shoveling manure.

He’s a Grim Reaper. And he’s going to teach her the family business.

Lex quickly assimilates into the peculiar world of Croak, a town populated entirely by reapers who deliver souls from this life to the next. Along with her infuriating yet intriguing partner Driggs and a rockstar crew of fellow Grim apprentices, Lex is soon zapping her targets like a natural born Killer.

Yet her innate ability morphs into an unchecked desire for justice—or is it vengeance?—whenever she’s forced to Kill a murder victim, craving to stop the attackers before they can strike again. So when people start to die—that is, people who aren’t supposed to be dying, people who have committed grievous crimes against the innocent—Lex’s curiosity is piqued. Her obsession grows as the bodies pile up, and a troubling question begins to swirl through her mind: if she succeeds in tracking down the murderer, will she stop the carnage—or will she ditch Croak and join in?

Book #2 : Scorch

Croak used to be the only place where Lex, a teenage Grim Reaper, felt like she fit in. but after she let the murderous Zara get away–and inadvertently transferred her ability to Damn souls to her on top of that–Lex is a pariah in the little town full of Grims. Her Junior Grim friends have stood by her, but that has only made them outcasts. Meanwhile, Zara is still out there Damning innocents, and no one is safe. It’s up to Lex’s Uncle Mort, mayor of Croak, to protect the townspeople. But when tragedy strikes, the Grims rise up against him, too.

To escape their wrath, Mort takes Lex and the other Juniors on a wild road trip to DeMyse, a glitzy Grim city, where they can hide out until the chaos in Croak subsides. Though this sparkling desert oasis is full of luxuries and amusements, Lex wants nothing more than to return to her simple little town and the good graces of its citizens. Her best chance at that would be to stop Zara once and for all–but how can she do that from DeMyse, where the Grims seem mysteriously oblivious to Zara’s killing spree? Lex needs to track down the secret book that would make Zara even more dangerous. But she has no idea of the chilling lengths her nemesis will go to in order to find it first.

Book #3 : Rogue

Teenage Grim Reaper Lex’s power to Damn souls is getting out of control. Her boyfriend, Driggs, is dead . . . sort of. She’s a fugitive, on the run from the maniacal new mayor of Croak and the townspeople who want to see her pay the price for her misdeeds. Uncle Mort rounds up the Junior Grims to flee Croak once again, but this time they’re joined by Grotton, the most powerful Grim of all time. Their new mission is clear: fix his mistakes, or the Afterlife will cease to exist, along with all the souls in it.

The gang heads for Necropolis, the labyrinth-like capital city of the Grimsphere. There, they discover that the Grimsphere needs a reboot. To do that, the portals to the Afterlife must be destroyed…but even that may not be enough to fix the damage. Things go from bad to worse, and when at last the fate of the Afterlife and all the souls of the Damned hang in the balance, it falls to Lex and her friends to make one final, impossible choice.

You can get all three books at Amazon as Kindle editions or in paperback.

The Martianby Andy Weir is one of those books that you embarrass yourself talking about with everyone you meet because it’s just so good you can’t not talk about it.

That’s what happened to me, anyway. Maybe you have more self-control. I wasn’t even finished with the book before I called my mother, who is also an avid reader, and started gushing about this one.

The thing about The Martian is that it surprises you. It’s an unassuming book, with a fun but predictable “man versus wild” / “man against nature” theme that we’ve all read plenty of times before, and yet … it’s not.

I knew within the first five pages that this was a special book for me and it turned out I was right. I devoured this book in one morning because once I started reading it, I couldn’t quit.

The Martian is a simple story. Mark Watney is an astronaut who gets trapped on Mars, left behind, left for dead, and since he isn’t the kind of man to just give up, he has to figure out how to survive, alone, until the next Mars mission brings a rescue—assuming there’s going to be a next mission.

That’s where the story opens and the book is the story of how Mark deals with his deadly and outrageous predicament. Where it goes is somewhere wonderful, making The Martian one of my favorite books of all time.

I have a huge TBR list. Most of you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. My problem is that I do hope to someday get to most of the books on my list, but the fact is that I’m probably going to be lucky to crack the spines (or the virtual spines, in most cases) of one percent of all the books I already know I want to read someday.

That, however, doesn’t stop me from adding new books to the list every chance I get. ;)

Here are some of the newest additions (and some of these books are most certainly not new, but they’re new to me).

Proxima by Stephen Baxter

Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse

Trust No One by Jayne Ann Krentz

Serpent by Clive Cussler

Star Bridge by James Gunn

Falling Sky by Rajan Khanna

Sex and the Single Earl by Vanessa Kelly

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Goliath by Richard Turner

Psion by Joan D. Vinge

Claimed by Evangeline Anderson

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers by Lawrence Block

The Burglar in the Closet by Lawrence Block

The Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes

The Mystery Woman by Amanda Quick

The Sword of Bedwyr by R. A. Salvatore

Some of these books are quite old, but since I’ve never read them, they’re still new to me. :)

I have a weakness for Amanda Quick’s historical romance novels, especially those from before her paranormal phase. Ravished, Mistress, Mischief, Deception, Affair … these are five of my favorites and I had a chance to read Mischief, Affair, and Deception for the umpteenth this past week or so and I had a great time doing it.

I have a difficult time sometimes putting into words why I liked (or didn’t like) a book I’ve read, but I’ll see what I can come up with for these three books.

Mischief

Mischief is a fun book, and I liked the fake romance (that of course turns into a real romance right away). And then there’s the treasure map and the fact that it couldn’t be clearer these two belong together. I won’t spoil the fun, but it’s obvious in the first ten pages why. I don’t know what it is in particular that makes this book stand out from some of the others, but it does, and it remains one of my favorites. Get your own copy of this book.

Affair

I’ve always thought Affair had an especially strong opening. It plops me right into a compelling story that I can’t resist. Note to self: don’t read the first chapter of any of these books if I don’t have any time I can devote to reading, because if I do, I’ll end up reading the entire book. That’s what happened with my reread of Affair. I read an excerpt of chapter one at the end of Mischief and ended up having to read this entire book again. It is definitely a great book and was well worth reading just one more time. Get your own copy of this book.

Deception

Deception is my all-time favorite Amanda Quick book after Ravished. The pirate angle is charming and I adore Jared Chillhurst … and his pocket watch. In fact, this entire book works so well that I have a hard time not wishing Ms. Quick would discover some distant relative of Jared’s and write a story about him. I simply adore this book and I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read it because I lost count years ago. If I had to recommend only two Amanda Quick books to someone, this one would be one of those books. Get your own copy of this book.

There were other books to chose from, but I enjoy fantasy, and this cover appealed to me. The description also caught my attention. :)

Oliver Twist is one of the most well-known stories ever told, about a young orphan who has to survive the mean streets of London before ultimately being rescued by a kindly benefactor.

But it is his friend, the Artful Dodger, who has the far more intriguing tale, filled with more adventure and excitement than anything boring Oliver could possibly get up to. Throw in some vampires and a plot to overthrow the British monarchy, and what you have is the thrilling account that Charles Dickens was too scared to share with the world.

From the brilliant mind of novelist and comic book veteran Peter David, Artful is the dark, funny, and action-packed story of one of the most fascinating characters in literary history.